Most comics work hard at their Edinburgh shows; few go so far as to emigrate and teach themselves a new language. Step forward – or should I say, return from China – Irish-American standup Des Bishop, who spent a year in the Middle Kingdom and is here to tell us what he's discovered. The unusual flaw is that one hour is laughably inadequate for the task in hand. The virtue is that Bishop has plenty to show and tell of a country we're eager to know about – and of his eyebrow-raising experiences there.
He starts by giving us a primer in the Mandarin language – the pictorial (or not so pictorial) script; the four vocal tones that make learning it so hazardous to outsiders. (Bishop was given a Chinese name one small inflection away from one big breach of good manners.) We're then told about his in-at-the-deep-end job as a greeter in a provincial restaurant, the difficulties barbers had with his hair and his efforts to meet Chinese women – which lead to an unlikely appearance on Chinese Take Me Out (audience: 5.5m), serenading someone with a rebel song about the Black and Tans.
The show yields insights into China – its alarming attitude to love and marriage, which makes dating hard work for Bishop; its racism (likewise); and its government's neurosis about the three T's (Taiwan, Tibet, Tiananmen) – which kick in when he starts performing standup. Bishop never resorts to cheap cultural-difference comedy, preferring to celebrate what we have in common. His understandably frantic delivery makes the whole thing feel a bit breathless, and sometimes it's too obvious that the show is an adjunct to a documentary series for RTE, not an end in itself. But you're won over by Bishop's zeal to communicate, while his enthusiasm for his new home, and its people – he's stayed on; he can't leave – is contagious.
• Until 24 August. Box office: 0131-226 0000. Venue: Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh.
